Shop around for graduate skills

While that practice is still very much in operation today, most of the major retailers have also recognised the value of employing graduates and cultivating their skills so that they offer the maximum benefit to the company as well as carving out successful careers for themselves in the process.

Food retailer ASDA is one of them. The company has 28 stores in Scotland employing around 8000 staff and with 850,000 customers every week, and over the past few days the ASDA Roadshow has been on the move around Scotland in search of 30 graduates who will become the retail movers and shakers of the future.

Those graduates will not necessarily come from retail-related disciplines, but will be selected rather by their intellectual ability and personality. Philip Horn, management development adviser with the company, explained the reasoning behind this policy.

"Graduates pick up management skills very quickly and we are looking for the intellectual ability to analyse sales, put forward ideas on how to build sales and natural leadership skills" he said. "It is more about personality than theory. If you are a good leader it is because you can inspire and motivate a team, not because you know the theory.

"We offer theory training in Year Two of the graduate trainee development programme after they have had actual hands-on experience of managing people so that it can be related to practice. Management training is all about fine-tuning your skills to get the best out of people."

ASDA offers graduate trainee schemes leading to areas like store operation, finance, buying, distribution and logistics, and information technology. The three-year programme aims at creating effective commercial managers and involves a general introduction followed by the development of management skills with the last year devoted to stretching potential.

Mark Menzies has been on the programme for the past 10 months after graduating from Glasgow University last year with an MA Hons in economic history.

According to Mark, a career in retailing involves a wide spectrum of business management skills from learning how to deal with people, both customers and colleagues, to the profitable buying and selling of products.

He was particularly attracted to the clear career structure at ASDA and the opportunity for taking on responsibility early in that career.

"I have been with ASDA for ten months, the first six of which were spent in induction at the Linwood store," he said. "I went on from there to be appointed produce manager at ASDA Bearsden. I have been there for three months and in January I will be moving onto a second position.

"I have discussed the possibility of spending time with "George" clothing, ASDA's own brand, and I see that as an interesting opportunity."

Mark appears to have a very clear view of where he wants to go in his career, but that has not been true of the majority of graduates who approached ASDA's stand at the Graduate Career Fair in the SECC. "People with engineering degrees were asking what we had for them, but we turned it around and asked them what they wanted to do," said Philip Horn. "It is more about the person and their drive and motivation than degree discipline.

"We have people with psychology degrees as well as more related degrees like food science, business studies and marketing. I did biomedical science. Generally, we have a very broad cross-section and we can develop them through the retail side into more specialist positions like buying and marketing.

"The opportunities are there for everyone. The graduate programme is stretching and demanding, but anyone can follow the same path as the graduates if they have the drive and the determination."

Angela Clancy from Giffnock in Glasgow, one of the graduates being interviewed by ASDA during the past week, has just completed a BA Hons in Service Sector Management at Glasgow Caledonian University.

She was very clear from the start that she wanted to work in a service-based industry, and had already contacted ASDA before she heard through the university careers office that the company was about to start its graduate recruitment drive in Scotland.

"I was interested because it appears to be a good management training programme offering a focus on each function," she explained. "I studied subjects like human resource management and marketing in my degree, but I prefer the idea of store management. I am always aware of the kind of service I get and the way the shops are laid out, and the changes I would like to make to provide a more effective service."

Angela's father is a publican, and as such has always worked in a customer-oriented industry. Both parents are happy with her choice of career. According to Philip Horn, that is not necessarily true of the majority of parents.

"Retailing has a bigger hurdle to get over than many other sectors in terms of perception," he explained. "Yet at the end of the day, any one of our stores would be equivalent to a business in its own right, turning over between #35m and #60m a year and employs 300-500 people.

"A general store manager is like a managing director of a very large business. He or she must be personnel specialists, marketing specialists, logistics specialists. People do not realise all that, and retailers like ourselves find it hard to convince people. If it comes down to a choice between joining a bank or a retailer, the parents will usually prefer the bank, even now.

As he moves towards the end of his first year, Mark Menzies has found his own parents very supportive and not without reason. Mark is already managing a team of about 20 people, has sales targets to meet every week and has acquired skills that are valuable to most employers.

"I'm running a department with a turnover in excess of #1m a year and the buck stops at me," he said. "If I get it wrong that impacts on the turnover and profitability - excellent experience."

For further information contact Philip Horn at Resourcing Department, ASDA Stores Ltd., ASDA House, Southbank, Great Wilson Street, Leeds LS11 5AD.